


This is not the Earth We Know

by Prometheus_23



Category: Destiny (Video Games), SCP Foundation
Genre: Combat, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Intrigue, Lots of guns, Teleportation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29859450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prometheus_23/pseuds/Prometheus_23
Summary: [Information redacted by order of O-5 Council]
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. Log 7777-01

**Log 7777-01:**

(Logged recordings of the initial discovery and contact with SCP-7777 and 7777-1)

**Foreword:** Elements of Mobile Task Force Nu-7 “Hammerdown” are deployed to urban Virginia to eliminate a suspected Sarkic Cult Summoning Ritual, flagged by several orders of unusual materials and keyword searches. Lieutenant Walker is Team Leader, also present are Sergeants Cross and Zull, Corporals Amber and Reck, and Privates Klein, Jack, and Bell.   
  
**< Begin Log>**

**Walker:** “Helios, this is Hammer 1-1, we have arrived at the building perimeter, preparing to breach.

**Helios Command:** “Affirmative, 1-1, you have permission to proceed. QRF is on stand-by and Gamma-5 is running interference.”

**Walker:** “Roger that, Helios, going dark.”

_ Sounds of muffled movement and whispering _

**Walker:** “Hammer 1, you all know the drill. Get in, stop whatever these Sarkic assholes are doing, and clear out any resistance. ROE is normal, shoot on sight and aim to kill, these guys can’t be reasoned with.”

**Sgt. Cross:** “Command give us any more info since we deployed? Which floor they’re on, or how many there are?”

**Walker:** “Nope, as usual. This place doesn’t have a basement at least, so we start at the bottom and work our way up, three floors, plus an attic.”

**Sgt. Cross:** “Thank god for small favors at least.”

_ Vehicle door opens and Hammer-1 departs _

**Walker:** “Reck, get the door, Zull, take Klein, Amber, and Bell and circle around back, meet in the middle.”

_ +30 seconds, front and rear entrances are breached, Hammer-1 begins to search the building _

**Sgt. Zull:** “First floor is clear! Moving to second.”

_ Sounds of rapid footsteps as Hammer-1 ascends to second floor _

**Sgt. Zull:** “Room left, clear!”

_ Building rumbles, a loud bang can be heard from floor above _

**Walker:** “Fuck! Reck, Cross, Jack, with me! Zull, stick with Amber, Klein, and Bell and clear this floor, we’re moving to Three!”

**Sgt. Zull:** “Got it, boss, we’ll be right behind you!”

_ Sounds of muffled shouting, rushed movement, and three gunshots from floor above _

**Cpl. Reck:** “The fuck is going on up there?”

**Walker:** “Shut it, Reck, not now!”

_ Lieutenant Walker, Sergeant Cross, Corporal Reck, and Private Jack arrive on third floor, encounter locked door _

**Walker:** “No time to be fancy, break it Cross!”

**Sgt. Cross:** “On the move.”

_ Sergeant Cross kicks open the door, and all four proceed quickly into the room _

**Sgt. Cross:** “One armed contact!”

_ The camera briefly flashes around the room, three dead cultists are on the floor, a bullet wound in the head for each. Walker, Cross, Reck, and Jack follow ROE and open fire. Contact is wearing stylized robed armor, and appears briefly surprised at their entry and immediate attack. _

**Walker:** “What the fuck?!”

_ Weapons fire on the contact appears to have little to no effect, being blocked by an overshield or energy barrier _

**Unknown:** “This doesn’t have to end in violence!”

**Walker:** “Cross, Reck, Jack, hold fire! What the fuck are you?”

**Unknown:** “Where am I? Who are these...people? They were toying with powers best left unknown.”

**Walker:** “Put the fucking gun down and we’ll talk, not before!”

**Unknown:** “As you wish.”

_ The unknown raises their hands and drops the oversized revolver in hand, before the weapon disappears in a glimmer of light _

**Sgt. Cross:** “What the fuck? Where did your weapon go?!”

**Unknown:** “Are you not familiar with Transmat Systems? This is Earth, is it not?”

**Walker:** “Yeah...we’re on Earth. What the hell is a Transmat?”

**Unknown:** *sighs* “A very complicated technology that allows for storage in stable pocket dimensions…”

**Walker:** “Goddamnit, where’s Tau-5 when you need them?”

**Walker:** “Cross, call this in. This is way outside our jurisdiction.”

**Sgt. Cross:** “On it, boss.”

**Unknown:** “What year is it?”

**Walker:** “I’m...sorry?”

**Unknown:** “What. Year. Is. It?”

**Walker:** “2015. Why?”

_ The Unknown goes silent, behaving as if speaking silently with another _

**Sgt. Cross:** “Boss, QRF’s on the way. Command says to take this one in for questioning.”

**Unknown:** “I would not try that if I were you. I have no conflict with Humans, but if you make it one, you will not live to see the end of it.”

**Walker:** “Sorry, we’ve got our orders. You can make this easy, or you can make it difficult.”

**Unknown:** “I, too, am sorry. Surf, give me Lumina.”

_ The revolver previously seen in use reappears in the Unknown’s hand, and they quickly raise it to aim at Lieutenant Walker _

**Sgt. Cross:** “Weapon!”

_ Sergeant Cross proceeds to raise his own weapon and attempts to fire. The unknown switches targets unnaturally quickly, and puts two shots into Cross, one in each shoulder _

**Cpl. Reck:** “Man down! Amber, get up here!”

**Walker:** “Wait-!”

_ The unknown raises its empty hand, and seemingly projects a blast of fire at the floor between Hammer-1 and itself _

**Walker:** “Magic User! Don’t let them get away!”

_ The Unknown flees the scene, breaking and leaping out of the third story window. QRF recordings indicate the Unknown used an unknown means of personal flight to land safely a distance away, and fled further into the suburbs _

**< End Log>**


	2. Log 7777-02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story, for future reference, was originally posted on Fanfiction, so any Authors Notes relating to comments that aren't here are on the aforementioned website.

**A/N: So, this was actually quite shocking for me, 130 views in 24 hours, give or take five, on my second story, and a spur-of-the-moment type fic as well. I have no words for how happy I am about that, and I wanted to first off clarify a few things. I am in school, so updates** **_will not_ ** **come regularly, and I’m not an amazing writer, so errors should be expected. Otherwise, this might be slightly confusing, but there will be varying POVs for this story, and the formatting may vary by chapter. Log 01 for example, is formatted after the SCPwiki log format, while chapters focusing on individual characters will take place from a more standard 3rd person or possibly 1st person perspective. I’ll talk more at the end, just...thanks.**

  
  


**United States of America, Virginia, 2015, Exact Date: Unknown, Exact Position: Unknown**

If Juno wasn’t a Guardian of the Warlock Praxic Order, she had a feeling she’d probably be having a very intense panic attack at the moment. As it was, she was just barely holding herself back from one anyways. Honestly, what the fuck?! 2015? She’d been thrown literally centuries, possibly millennia, through time! Surf, bless her paracausal heart, was the only thing keeping her anchored at the moment, and the comforting presence of the Ghost in her head was silent but calming. 

After fleeing whatever archaic dark ritual had brought her here, and what was likely Police or Law Enforcement of some kind, she’d circled around towards the house she had appeared in. If she had any hope of returning to The City, it lay in whatever texts and artefacts the cultists, for she was reasonably sure that’s what they were, possessed. The pressing issue there was the Police, Law Enforcement, or maybe even Military that were currently clearing out the building as men possessed. She’d never get close without being spotted, arrested, killed, or worse. It was a pity she wasn’t a Blade Dancer or a Night Stalker, their abilities being very useful right about now.

Surf appeared floating around her head, and Juno smiled wryly beneath her helmet, “Got any ideas, buddy?” Her helmet’s output was turned off, to muffle her breathing and voice, though she was confident she was far enough that they wouldn’t see her in the dusky light.

The Ghost chirped and flitted around, peering across at the small swarm of armed personnel, “Tag whatever truck they store everything in, and follow it? Have you still got those tracers Cayde gave you for that Op in the Cosmodrome?”

The idea had merit, even as she winced at the mention of the fallen Vanguard. He had been a friend, and the Prince had suffered greatly for his death.”Yeah, I’ve got them, but again, how do we get close? I can’t exactly walk on up to them without tipping them off and getting my head ventilated.”

“Let me go, then? I’m literally the size of a baseball, and it’s fairly dark still. They won’t see me.” the Ghost offers, tilting slightly and ending the proposition with another chirp. Juno felt that irrational spike of fear in her chest, whenever her Ghost offered to do something risky.

“Surf, no… I don’t-I can’t lose you. Not like, Cayde and Sundance!” It was stupid, she knew. Ghosts are notoriously hard to kill or damage, and the only reason The Sharpshooter had killed Sundance was because of a weapon charged with corrupted energies.

Surf made something resembling the digital approximation of a sigh, her single eye drooping slightly, “You know it won’t be like that! Besides, even if they do spot me, I can run away, and I always have you to look after me, right?”

-

“I can’t believe Surf talked me into this…” Juno grumbles to herself, crouched in a hedgerow across from the occupied building, a long rifle cradled in her arms. Despite her position as a Praxic, The Long Goodbye was a quality piece of hardware from The Drifter and had carried her through many a long fight. Through the scope, she tracked the Little Lights movements as her life companion snuck up on the Vans that were being loaded with boxes of what appeared to be quarantined materials.

Something was off about this whole situation, more so than time travel, which was well established to be possible, if not reliable, with Vex tech. The thing was, there wasn’t any Vex tech anywhere nearby, and there hadn’t been any on Luna either, where she’d been dealing with a Hive Death Cult. There was also the fact that local police, especially in a time supposedly before the Hive arrived in Sol, were oddly prepared for this, not to mention quite heavily armed.

The Ghost disappeared from her sight, dipping down under the first vehicle to presumably hide a tracking beacon. She could do nothing but pray now, and pray she did. To the Traveler, to any friendly deities that may be listening, and to the spirits of those before her, that they may watch over her. Six minutes and 37 seconds later, Surf returned, floating beside her head as she let out a deep breath. “Trackers planted on the three most likely vehicles, Guardian, and I took the opportunity to poke around an unattended computer for a moment. Their security could do with a rework, understandable given the time.”

Juno smirked, of course, the Ghost couldn’t resist the opportunity to grab some intel given the opportunity. “So what’s the scoop? Where are we, and who are they?”   
  


Surf shuddered in its shell, looking at her with what was in-practice as close to a serious expression as a floating eyeball could get. “You’re not gonna like it, but it seems like we really  _ are _ in 2015, it’s November 2nd, to be precise. Welcome the East Coast of the still United States of America, Richmond, Virginia. Those guys? Not Police, not Military either. Call themselves ‘The Foundation’, and apparently, they deal with the ‘Paranormal, Anomalous, and Unusual’, all in the name of protecting Humanity at large. I took the liberty of leaving a few bugs and back doors into their systems if we can ever find ourselves among them or against them.”

The Guardian chuckled and shook her head, amazed at her Ghost, though she really shouldn’t be. Doing the Impossible was a Guardian’s bread and butter, after all, and this was just taking it to new lengths. “I don’t suppose you have a Sparrow or Jumpship in storage, Surf?”

Surf makes a negative noise, “Sorry, Juno, but Obsidian Wings was still in orbit over Luna, and I don’t keep a Sparrow in our storage, it takes a lot of space, after all. You’ll have to find local transport, and probably...some new clothes, while you’re at it. I doubt City Style will be normal around here.”

Juno sighs, breaking and entering it was, then. It was a good thing Cayde had taught her how to pick mechanical locks, as it was very likely most people didn’t use digital locks yet. With a silent command, The Long Goodbye glimmered into her inventory, and she slipped away before any of the troopers from ‘The Foundation’ could investigate the light.

-

They’d struck the jackpot, it seemed. Surf had scanned the neighbourhood(a long and quite boring process, to be sure), and located an unoccupied home with a vehicle present. Even better, civilian clothing that actually fit her, admittedly with very minor use of glimmer for a few adjustments. It wasn’t to her tastes, all told, but it looked much more typical than her armour or any City clothing she may have in her inventory.

The access keys to the vehicle outside were a bit more difficult, tiny little physical things that they were. It would be so much easier for them to be digital, but oh well. The next worry was that she didn’t actually know how to  _ drive _ it. It couldn’t be harder than one of Amanda’s tanks, right...?

-

Turns out, this was WAY more difficult than Amanda’s tanks. At least the measurement displays were familiar, if not the actual speed measurement. The wheels were more sluggish than a Sparrow or Tank, and turning was much more difficult to control. At least there weren’t many others on the roads at this time for her to put in danger. Ghost was a godsend, syncing up through the home to this time’s equivalent to the planetary network and explaining the different mechanics of the car. 

She’d managed to (hopefully) park the vehicle a fair distance away from the Foundation perimeter, watching through a spotter scope she usually kept on hand. They looked to be finishing up, and they had already waved off several curious civilians, waving around what she was reasonably sure were fake badges. 

It took a few minutes, but they finally got moving, the convoy of vans and trucks pulling onto the road and driving off. Juno waited another two minutes before following, making sure to keep several vehicles between herself and the convoy if at all possible, even as she followed. Every minute she drove, she slowly felt more comfortable with the vehicle. Guardians had to adjust quickly to every situation they find themselves in, and this was no different. Well, it is, but that’s not the point.

Half an hour became an hour, and one hour became two. Either they were leading her on a merry chase, and she was none the wiser, or wherever they were based out of was a lot more remote than she’d expected. Two hours became four, and Juno started to get concerned, but just as quick as it came, that concern was banished in place of determination and wariness, as she watched the convoy pull off the road and down a path practically carved into the woods present in this part of the area. 

Noting the path down, and driving nearly a mile past it, she pulls the car over and into the woods, parking it behind a group of trees and bushes conveniently large enough to hide it. Surf, regardless, had to remind her to lock it, considering the Ghost couldn’t transmat it to the ship they didn’t have. That done, the civvie clothes went into storage and out came the armour, and once more she felt whole, far more comfortable in her armour than she ever would be in civvie clothes. 

It was a relatively short jog to the entrance to the path, and though she didn’t want to take too long in following, for fear of losing track of the vehicles she was tracking, she took her time in searching for any security measures in the area and was glad she did when Surf noted that there was a whole network of security cameras throughout the area, monitoring the road in its entirety. Fortunately, this was a much easier issue to fix than live watchers, and she let her Ghost do the work of spoofing the network to remove her from the camera’s sights.

From there, it was a quiet, if tense, walk down the path. Keeping an ear out for any vehicles or voices, she stuck to the side of the road just in case, Surf safely tucked away in its extradimensional space. Fifteen minutes at a steady walking pace was how long it took Juno to reach the Foundation Compound, coming upon  _ another _ obstacle in her path. While relatively simple, it still had to be handled with care, as the wall before her was linked to separate, closed security systems that Surf couldn’t access without a centralized terminal. Dawnblade or a Novabomb could probably cut right through it, but that tended to be...quite loud. 

In the end, it came down to simply drawing another weapon out of her inventory. It was an older weapon, one she’d found on Mars with the help of Ana Bray. 18 Kelvins, a silenced Sidearm. Getting as close as she dared, she took aim and shot apart the wires connecting one of the cameras to the network, thus creating a blind spot. Leaping up with the assistance of her glide abilities, she pulled herself up and over the wall, dropping down quietly on the other side and glancing around. She was clear. Hopefully, the damage to the wires looked enough like a bird or some animal had gone at it, that there wasn’t any immediate suspicion of an infiltrator.

Surf whispered in her head, giving her a general bearing on the tracers, and scanning stealthily for an access point to the internal network. The trucks were in a vehicle bay nearly fifty meters away, across open ground. She cast a furtive glance around for anyone in sight, spotting no one but spying several moving cameras sweeping the courtyard. She’d have to time this perfectly...or she could move across the rooftops. If she hadn’t been wearing a helmet, she likely would have facepalmed at the poor planning. 

Boosting up onto the roof with glide, she casts a new look around, running and climbing over several roof-mounted pieces of machinery, until she’d gone around, gliding over the narrowest section of the courtyard she could find with moments to spare. Crouching down on the roof, she could hear movement and people speaking down below in the vehicle depot, which made her job much more difficult. “Surf, can you jam any communications in or out of the Vehicle Bay?”

The Ghost appeared next to her, twirling its shell for a moment as it scanned for any communications frequencies in use. “Easily! These comms are so old I could do it while sleeping.”

She grins, “Good, start jamming the second I jump down. Stay out of sight, even if I go down. We don’t have any clue what they’ll do to you if they can get you.”

Surf chirps and spins, disappearing from sight as it returns to its ‘pocket’ reality. She turns around and steps back off the roof, landing with a quiet thump in the doorway, Lumina in one hand, a purposely toned down well of flame in the other. “Hello boys, you’ve got something I need!”

-

**A/N: Hey all, thanks for reading! Please, leave a review if there’s anything that I can improve upon, missed, or got incorrect. I welcome constructive criticism when it comes to my writing readily, and I’ll happily PM people if they have advice! Check out my other story if you’re interested, and stay tuned! Juno and Surf will be back for more soon enough!**


	3. Log 7777-03

**A/N: Thanks to Marcellasnow231 for pointing out some aspects of Junos’ situation that I hadn’t fully considered, and for everyone else who reviewed!**

**Log 7777-03.**

Whatever doubts Juno may have had about the Foundation, they were quickly annulled by the quick responses of those that were armed in the garage. As unarmed workers and what looked like medical personnel dived for cover, her ‘friends’ from Nu-7 immediately dove into action, shouting for her to drop her weapon and surrender. She was reasonably sure one of them had just made sad noises when she appeared, too.

She sighed, there would be no negotiating here, she knew, but that didn’t mean she had to kill. Strafing left, she put down rounds from Lumina into one of the soldiers just a second slower than the others, to the cries of alarm from his compatriots as he went down with a pained scream. Her chest tightened at his cries, fighting other humans was a taboo. The Crucible was one thing, and raiders were another, but this, this was just people doing their jobs, and good ones, at that. 

Return fire scattered across her shields, and she grunted at the rapid impacts, reduced but still plainly felt. The weapons were a punchy calibre, but the velocity was low, to the point where they didn’t do more than plink away at her shields. Still, that didn’t mean she should stick to one spot, and as such leapt into the air, her glide bursting to life around her as she swept over their cover, putting shots into shoulders, arms, legs, and knees. Debilitating, painful, or crippling, but not lethal. She left the unarmed ones alone so long as they didn’t go for weapons or try to run.

Her head snapped to the side, and she winced at the flare of pain from her neck, pivoting around, she reflexively fired a return shot to the origin point, cursing herself as one of the soldiers, whom she recognized as the Lieutenant from before, slid to the ground in a growing puddle of blood, a large calibre handgun to one side. Blasted idiots trying to be heroes, she peered around for any other armed personnel but found only those moaning on the ground.

Stomping over to the likely dying man, she crouched down and pulled aside his flak jacket, looking close at the gaping wound left by the Hand Cannon. Lumina had killed far greater enemies, and it was a miracle that the man was alive at all, still. Even in her time, this was a lethal wound, and not one the lightless could treat. It was good, then, that she was not lightless, and drew up the power of the Light to cast a Healing Well beneath him. She had been told in the past that a Healing Well was an odd experience for those without light, as flesh and bone knit itself back together, and bullets were spit right back out of the wound they caused.

The mans’ back arched, and he coughed up blood as his lung put itself back together and reinflated, and his ribs fused back into one piece. He stared up at her with wide, confused eyes as he went from mortally wounded to sore and covered in his own blood in seconds. He’d probably be weak from blood-loss still, but he would live. She kicked his handgun away, and swept past him and opened the van with the tracer attached to it.

Juno only had a few moments now, she knew. Gunfire would be noticed in short order, combined with the lack of communications from the soldiers. Whispering for Surf to transmat the crates of materials into their inventory, she turned around to leave when, barely more than a whisper, the Lieutenant spoke to her. 

“W-what are you?” the soldier asked, and she smiled behind her helmet, looking down at him, Lumina locked on her hip. “I am Juno. Warlock of the Praxic Order, Guardian of the Last Safe City on Earth, God Slayer, Fate Breaker, and Light Bearer. I seek only to return to where I was, Lieutenant Walker of The Foundation, and I will not be denied that.”

The man gaped at her, likely overwhelmed by the happenings of the past few minutes. She left him that way, the Healing Well fading away into nothing a few seconds later. She swept out of the loading bay and pulled herself back onto the roof mere moments before another squad of soldiers swept out of the building across the courtyard and rushed towards the garage. She crept out of sight, crouching behind the miscellaneous machinery on the roof. Surf appeared next to her and twirled its blue and white shell mischievously. “There’s a lot of reading here, Guardian, and I’ve dismantled the crates it was all in. Didn’t give much in the way of Glimmer, but there was a little.”

She nods silently and settles in to wait for the heat to die down. She’d let them assume she’d already escaped, then slip out once they lowered their guard. Guardians didn’t  _ need _ to sleep, or even eat, but sleep she would, it was better than sitting here bored and inactive. “Wake me if anyone comes up onto the rooftop, Surf.”

It took, by Juno’s count, nine hours for the heat to die down enough that they wouldn’t notice her the second she moved. Disappointingly, no one checked the rooftops, so they weren’t as careful as she thought, or there was just someone incompetent in charge. Either way, it worked in her favour, and she managed to quietly slip away. Oh, she was sure they’d repaired the camera she’d disabled, and they would see her leaving, but by the time they could rally anyone to pursue, she’d be long gone.

The time for stealth passed, she makes her way as quickly as possible to her stolen vehicle and gets the hell out of dodge, so to speak. It took her another three hours to encounter yet another problem. Mainly, the fact that vehicles in this age still used combustion engines over the Hydrogen and Arc engines used by Sparrows and Amanda’s Tanks respectively. The second was her lack of money. She highly doubted a fueling station would take Glimmer, and she had no idea what currency in Old America looked like, or how it worked. Looks like she’d have to ditch the car for now, or hide it somewhere until she could refuel it or earn some money.

The third issue was much more pressing because, for all intents and purposes, she didn’t exist. She had no identification, no records, and no friends to fall back on here. Of course, there were less than legal ways around those problems, but it all came back to having money to use first, which looped around to not having an identity, and so forth. Urgh, time travel was slowly getting higher and higher on her shit-list.

It took half an hour, of which she was constantly worrying about the concerningly low fuel gauge, for Juno to find somewhere relatively remote and inconspicuous to store the car. Leaving it in an abandoned lot on the edge of a town called Roanoke, she switched out her armour for the clothing stolen the day previously. She frowned at the clothes, the colours didn’t suit her at all, and she wasn’t terribly happy with the utter lack of protection and style to them. “Surf, if you could scan a bunch of clothes, could you synthesize some with the armour materials we have on hand? I know we’ve got some Sapphire Wire and Glimmer, at least.”

The Ghost appears, swirling around her head cheerfully, “Of course, Guardian. That way I could even apply Shaders to it if you wanted!” That was good news, a little slice of home, at least. Again, it would have to wait for her to get the lay of the land, at least, but it was a goal, if just a short term one, to keep her on track. Tucking the keys into a pocket, Juno wanders further into town, taking in the sights and peace of it all. There was no war here, no Fallen Pirates bearing down at every moment, no Cabal Warships contesting for dominion in orbit. It was jarring, really. What was there for a creature of battle to do, with no wars to fight?

For most Guardians, the thought of an end to the fight was their Final Death, their Ghost shattering, and a bullet between the eyes. For those few who survived the loss of their Ghosts, they often disappeared and never returned, or lost the will to fight entirely. Here, though? There was nothing for Juno to fight, no encroaching Darkness to defend against, no Rogue Lightbearers to chase down, nothing, that is, except for those ‘anomalies’ the Foundation seemed so hellbent on containing.

That, though, would require further research and would go on the back burner until she could find herself somewhere to stay and a source of income. As she walked and lay lost in thought, she idly noted that she was drawing looks from some of those people around her, and she frowned. Granted, for a woman, she was fairly tall, standing near 6’5”, but that was most Guardians, perhaps women in this time were shorter? That  _ did _ seem to be the case as she looked around more, most women seemed to be around 5’6” to 5’11”. She grumbled to herself, wonderful, another thing to keep mindful of in staying incognito.

Of course, Fate being the massive jerk that it was, Juno can’t go five minutes without being tied up in some sort of trouble, and as she’s walking, she picks up muffled cries from an alleyway to her right and moves to investigate. A few meters down the alley, two men are ganging up on a skinny kid, shoving him around and laughing darkly. Typical bullies, then, probably trying to get money out of the poor kid. She lets out a sigh and pops her knuckles, it would be unbecoming of her to let this stand, and armour or no, she could handle a couple of Standard Humans, buff or not.

Stepping further into the alleyway, she lets her hands drop to her sides in a display of passivity, then draws their attention with words rather than actions. “Can that boy help you with something, gentlemen?”

**Perspective Shift.**

**Jason Maldano, 18 Years old, Roanoke Virginia.**

Jason was having a bad day, and it was only getting worse. His mother was in the hospital slowly dying of cancer, and his father was a career drunk who barely came home, so it came down to him to care for his younger sister. He had been forced to drop out of high-school and take on a second part-time job to help out, and the midnight shift had been awful. Come the end of his shift, and he’s sent home for the day ready to fall asleep until it was time to work again, and he goes and gets himself dragged into an alleyway and attacked. They wanted his money, but what part of him not having any cash didn’t they understand? His chances of getting out of this without going to the hospital himself were looking more and more unlikely.

Jason stumbled from being shoved by one of the two huge men holding him here and bumped into the wall behind him, half expecting another push that didn’t come. It was at that moment that he noticed someone new had entered the alleyway, an abnormally tall and buff looking woman. She asked, “Can that boy help you with something, Gentlemen?” and his rising hopes of her simply calling the police faded away. Couldn’t she see that there were two of them and one of her? She’d be better off running away and finding help!

The slightly taller of the two men, whom Jason had figured was the leader of the pair, growled at the woman and spit out, “Fuck off lady, unless you want to become a smear on the wall.”

He could barely see her raise an eyebrow in the poor light, and step forward. “That’s no way to treat a woman, boys. I wonder if I could teach you two some proper manners, hmm?”

Jason leaned forward, wincing at the myriad of bruises quickly forming on his body, “W-wait-!” before he gets shoved back against the wall, crying out as his head hits the brick wall, “Shut it, kid!” comes from the smaller of the two men.

That visibly angers the woman, if the tensing of her body and her clenched fists are any indication, and she rapidly steps inside the taller man's personal space, landing a firm punch into his gut, driving the breath from his lungs and practically folding him over her arm. He wheezed and fell to the side, out of the fight if but for a moment. The shorter one cries out in anger and rushes her, lashing out with a wild haymaker, which she smoothly weaves around and slams a jab into his side, leaving him, too, wheezing and moaning. She kicks them both in the side once, frowning. “I expected you two to put up more of a fight. All bark and no bite, I suppose.”

Jason merely stares at her with wide eyes as she crouches down and pats the two down, and when the taller one tries to get back up, she thumps him hard on the head, knocking him unconscious. Who was his mysterious saviour, and why had she intervened to begin with?

**Perspective Shift.**

**Warlock Juno, Roanoke Virginia.**

Well, if nothing else, she knew she hadn’t lost her step when it came to CQC, even if that had been a rather disappointing fight. Pulling the wallets off the two mooks, she dumped the IDs if there were any and anything that didn’t look useful. Finding a third, smaller wallet with the kids face on the ID, she stands up and tosses it back to him, which he fumbles with and nearly drops. “Are you hurt, young one?”

He flinches at her address, and quickly tucks the wallet away, casting a glance at the unconscious mooks. “Y-yeah, why did you help me?”

She raises an eyebrow, “Why would I not? You were obviously in trouble, and these two were of less than noble intention.” As if that explained everything which, for her, it did. She lost nothing for this and helped someone else. Maybe people at this time were less altruistic? The Collapse and the Red War had brought the people of The City together as nothing else had, and they’d grown all the better for it.

The boy looks like he wants to protest, then obviously reconsiders as his eyes once again drop to the two unconscious men. He rubs the back of his head and winces, his hand coming away slightly red, he was bleeding from where he’d hit the wall. He sways on his feet, suddenly dizzy. That’s not good. Juno curses herself for not checking the boy for injuries before

Quickly stepping in to hold him upright, she pulls back his hair and winces, that was a nasty bash, one that could have bad consequences if not dealt with soon. “Where do you live, boy? I’m taking you home.” This was not the place for a healing well, the privacy of a home would be much better, though there would still be an interesting conversation once it was done.

He murmurs out an address, and Juno has Surf direct her to it, keeping mindful to avoid too many people, as they might start asking awkward questions. By the time they arrive, he’s practically unconscious in her arms, and she has to bang loudly on the door to get someone to open it, a girl probably a few years younger than the boy in her arms greets her. She gasps and backs up, practically begging Juno to bring him in. 

“I can help him, but I need somewhere open to put him down! Grab towels and warm water, too!” the Guardian calls out, moving quickly into the house. The little girl points towards an open room with a television and a couch, and Juno moves to lay the boy down, gently holding up his head as the little girl slips a towel beneath it.

Now, this was where the fun began. Juno knew that a Healing Well could repair the most grievous wounds in seconds, yet she wasn’t sure on the topic of disease or sickness. Cleaning the wound of bacteria would likely be necessary, if just to be safer rather than sorry. Using the water and extra towels brought by presumably the younger sister, she gently adjusts the boy and rinses the back of his head, the towel quickly turning a bright red.

That done, it was time for the healing itself. She looks to the panicked little girl and smirks, “This is going to be strange, but do not worry, and please, do not panic.” That said, Juno reaches within, and draws up the Light once more, casting it into the swirling radiance of a Healing Well, and she lets out a breath. Despite not being injured herself, the Healing Well refreshes and soothes her. The boy's wounds heal quickly as well, bruises and scrapes fading away in seconds, and his breathing evening out as the head wound fades away. The little girl lets out a surprised gasp, but instead rushes straight in to check her brother.

It took perhaps an hour for the boy, who had introduced himself as Jason Maldano, to wake up and profusely thank Juno for her help. While he was confused on what she had done, he was thankful enough that he didn’t intend to push on the matter. His sister, Grace, on the other hand, had nothing but excited questions once the initial shock wore off. Juno had been accused almost immediately of using magic, and she had merely chuckled and answered with, “Something like that.” and refused to explain further. 

Now the young girl just glared at Juno from across the table the three were seated at, cheeks puffed up at her refusal to explain her powers. There was no need to expose these children to the world in which she lived, or lead their lives into her own, and the chaos and conflict that would surely follow. She did have questions of her own, though…

“You have many questions, young ones. I have questions of my own, if you are willing to trade information?” She proposed, expecting hesitance or wariness. Instead, she got eager affirmatives from the both of them, and so began Warlock Juno’s first real foray into learning the world she’d entered into.

**A/N: I admit, this felt like a somewhat awkward spot to end off on, but I’m running on fumes at the moment, and I’ve been eager to get another chapter out before Thanksgiving here in the US. As always, reviews are always welcome, and so is constructive input and criticisms, as I’m always looking to improve my writing. If anything seems inaccurate or poorly written, PLEASE, let me know! Juno and Surf will return!**

**_Editing assistance by OmegaEntertainment._ **


	4. Log 7777-04

**A/N: Thanks to AmmoniteRafriit and Marcellasnow231 for the reviews, suggestions, and ideas! It warms my heart to know that there are people reading my work and enjoying it. I’d also like to thank Author Keltoi, whose own story has partially inspired this one!**

**Log 7777-04.**

**Foreword:** After Action Interview with personnel of Mobile Task Force Nu-7 “Hammerdown” after a raid by SCP-7777 on a secondary Foundation Compound in which a number of Sarkic Cult texts and items were stolen.

**Begin Log.**

**Dr. Martin:** “Interview Subject is Nu-7 Lieutenant Shane Walker, present during raid on Sarkic Cult Sect. Lieutenant, can you tell me what happened after you returned to Site 47?”

**Lt. Walker:** “Yeah, uh, sure. After we encountered the anomaly at the Sarkic Cult place, we decided to grab all the texts and artefacts they had stored there and brought them back for destruction or containment. Cross was wounded, and the traveller had fled, so we rushed to clear out. I don’t know how, but the traveller must have tracked us back to the Site, and hit us while we were unpacking the Sarkic shit.”

**Dr. Martin:** “What happened then? Security feeds were distorted or unrecoverable, and your Combat Recorders were off by this point.”

**Lt. Walker:** “Right. One second everything’s fine, the next the traveller is standing in the entrance, throwing out a witty one-liner. I was in the truck, so I was a few seconds behind the rest of my team in getting ready, and I missed the first couple lines of the conversation. I think they didn’t  _ want _ to fight and asked for us to give them the Sarkic texts.”

**Dr. Martin:** “Standard Operating Procedures is to incapacitate any targets who breach a Site and secure them for interrogation, yes? Did your team follow through on this?”

_ Lieutenant Walker scoffs and shifts position in his seat. _

**Lt. Walker:** “We fucking tried, fat lot of good it did us. The traveller must have some kind of over shield, or their armour is a lot tougher than it looks. All of us directing our fire on them at once didn’t even make them flinch, and apparently, their own gun punches straight through our armour.”

**Dr. Martin:** “Your entire team survived, though. Can you think of a reason for that?”

**Lt. Walker:** “Remember how I said they didn’t  _ want _ to fight us? I suppose they didn’t want to kill us, either. They went for non-lethal shots only, I guess. Nearly killed me, though, when I got the drop on them. I put a round from my sidearm into their helmet, and it didn’t do shit. I think when they shot me, it was more reflex than anything. They didn’t panic, but they went out of their way to save me from a kill-shot.”

**Dr. Martin:** “That’s right, your armour had a hole centre-mass, but you showed no signs of a wound there on your medical exam post-action.”

**Lt. Walker:** “Yeah… I wasn’t entirely cognizant, but I think they healed me somehow. They blew a goddamn hole in my chest, then fixed it like it was nothing! I just remember a bright yellow light, and it felt like my body put itself back together. Weirdest shit I’ve ever felt.”

**Dr. Martin:** “So in addition to an unknown capacity to resist conventional firearms, the ability to fly, stealth or tracking capabilities, and ‘trans-dimensional storage’, this interdimensional warrior can also magically heal fatal wounds?”

**Lt. Walker:** “Yeah, there’s one more thing, too. They, uh, introduced themselves before they left. They said, ‘I am Juno. Warlock of the Praxic Order, Guardian of the Last Safe City on Earth, God Slayer, Fate Breaker, and Light Bearer.’ They said that they sought only to return to where they were before and that they wouldn’t be denied that.”

**Dr. Martin:** “This wasn’t in your official report. Why?”

**Lt. Walker:** “Honestly, I’m half-convinced I was hallucinating. The more I think about it, the less believable it sounds. ‘The last safe city on Earth? God Slayer?’ I mean, the fuck? If that’s true, I don’t think we stood a chance, to begin with. I don’t know if Tau-5 even stands a chance.”

**Dr. Martin:** “Right...I think that will be all for now. Thank you, you’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”

**End Log**

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia.**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker.**

Stepping out of the interview/interrogation room, Shane let his posture slip to a quite noticeable degree, slouching and shoving his hands in his pockets. Unbecoming of him, if his men saw him, he knew, but holy shit, it’d been a rough 24 hours. His first objective was food, the second objective was sleep because goddamn did he need a nap.

Stepping slowly into the cafeteria, he glances around and spots an empty spot near the back corner. Noting it down, he steps into line and grabs a tray full of food, most of which probably wasn’t particularly healthy for him, not that he cared currently. Food in hand, he sits in the previously noted secluded spot, not that fate seemed to want it to stay that way.

He could have counted the number of seconds that had passed on one hand before the clatter of more trays and moving feet surrounded him, as the rest of Hammer 1 rushed to talk to him. The only thing he had the energy to do was sigh as they sat down around him, attention firmly on him. Reck is the first to speak, asking, “How’d it go, Boss? Any juicy details you can share?”

He sighs again. They wouldn’t leave him alone until he told them  _ something _ , so he might as well oblige them. “I think they’re giving the traveller an SCP designation. And oddly, they didn’t tell me to restrict any info on them. I think the Higher-Ups  _ want _ info on this spread around so that nobody does anything stupid.”

**Roanoke, Virginia.**

**Warlock Juno.**

Juno stared into the black visor of her Prodigal Hood, the helmet of her current armor setup. This armor had seen her through thick and thin, yet she doubted it would help her much here. These children, the Maldanos, lived a life in despair and desperation. The brother worked himself ragged in an attempt to support the remnants of a once happy family, while the younger sister went to school. The father was an absent drunk, and the mother was in the hospital dying of a disease long extinct in her time. 

Her heart had shattered a little, when she had to explain that she couldn’t heal their mother. She simply didn’t know what would happen if a genetic disease was exposed to a Healing Rift or Well of Radiance. Warlock Healing was meant for battle wounds, not disease and sickness. She was no Warlord, not even close, and if any of the few surviving Warlords  _ did _ know, she was far beyond the reach of their advice.

Nonetheless, they had been beyond thankful for what little help she had provided them with, and answered her questions eagerly. She now had a rough idea of how the US economic system functioned, and a decent some of money thanks to the wallets of the two muggers she’d beat down earlier. In return, she’d discretely had Surf poke around the brothers phone, and installed a tracer program and a way for them to reach Surf if they were in trouble. She’d already stayed longer than she should have, and if she put them in more danger, she would make sure they came out of it intact.

She frowned and swiped a finger along the side of the helmet, noting yet another scratch to add to the myriad of small marks it had gathered in its service. The bullet from the Foundation Lieutenant had hurt, but done nothing more. No damage to the armor’s integrity, so she left it as it was, another reminder of her journey. The helmet disappeared in the haze of transmat as Surf returned it to the inventory, and she stood. It was time to keep moving forwards, she was still far too close to the Foundation for her comfort.

Leaving the Maldanos with a warning not to contact her unless it was truly necessary, and not to speak openly of her abilities, she departed with a new purpose. She had several items on her list to do before she departed Roanoke, which include a visit to a Library, refuelling her car, and finding more than one set of clothes, especially more casual clothes. The vehicle took priority, and so that’s where she went first, and encountered yet  _ another _ problem in her series of never ending bad luck.

Juno sat frowning to herself, an occasional glare directed towards the unmarked white van filled with Foundation Operators parked on the other side of the lot from her own vehicle. She’d found a decent spot across the street, where she could observe without being immediately noted herself, and she’d been here for more than an hour now, pondering how to sort this particular issue. Juno never thought she’d regret being a Warlock, but having the skillsets of a Hunter would be immensely useful, as the past 36 hours had shown her.

She was reasonably sure these guys weren’t going anywhere, and most of the possible ideas Surf and she had discussed had been shot down or reconsidered one way or another. Her best option was to wait until late in the night before making her move, when they’d likely be at their most tired. Well, she had a good few hours before then, so she could go off and accomplish one or two of her other goals. This would also give her more time to fine tune her plan for when the time came.

Stepping into a local clothing store a few minutes later, Juno realized that during the evening was probably the best time she could have decided to do what she is, as there were very few people actually in the store, and the staff would be bored or otherwise occupied, leaving her free to scan clothing for synthesis with her materials. Casting a wary glance towards some of the more...interesting items, she turns instead towards the more casual wear section, pulling several items that catch her eye off the racks, uncaring for the sizes. Surf could compensate for that when rebuilding the clothing using Guardian materials. Disappearing into a changing booth, the quick green flashes of Surf scanning the clothing was barely noticeable behind the door, though she did emerge rather quickly, if anyone  _ had _ been observing her.

Smirking lightly at how quick and easy that was, she returns the clothing to its racks, and leaves the store without a word. She slips into an alleyway a fair distance down the road, and the bright shimmer of transmat covers her as she switches out the(in her opinion) rather stuffy and professional clothes she had been wearing for a set of cargo pants,a t-shirt, and a hoodie, all matching in the colors of Calus’ Selected, a Shader earned on the Leviathan during one of her incursions there.

Returning to her position to observe the Foundation Operators, she settles in as comfortably as she can, and silently requests Surf to wake her if anything happens. Guardian’s didn’t  _ need _ to sleep, per se, but it was still enjoyable, relaxing, and helped to focus the mind. As she drifts off to sleep, she dreams of the world she’d left behind, with all its wonders and terrors.

Surf roused her in the earliest hours of the morning, near 3 AM according to the Ghost. She yawns and pulls herself to her feet, breathing in the crisp cold air of receding Autumn and coming Winter. She pulls the hoodie over her head, sticks her hands in her pockets, and starts towards the van, body relaxed and a tired look on her face. She makes it almost all the way to the van before they notice her, the two in the front seats audibly tensing. She steps up to the passenger side and knocks on the window, which is cautiously lowered, the rather conspicuous Operator looking out at her.

“Can you tell me where the nearest Bus Station is? I got dumped off my ride early, and I’m not quite sure where I am.” She asks, acting as a late night traveler. The Foundation Operator doesn’t relax, not quite, but his guard lowers. He grunts and rolls his eyes, “A few blocks down Main and on the left, there’s a Greyhound Station there.”

She nods and lets her expression relax slightly, “Thanks for the directions. Oh, one last thing!” Attention drawn back to her, she lashes out and wraps an arm around the passenger side operator, dragging him half out of the van and putting him in a stranglehold. 18 Kelvins slips out of a pocket, pointed at the driver’s head. “Don’t make a sound, and you’ll both come out of this unharmed.”

The driver silently raises his hands, he wasn’t armed. The passenger currently held in a choke hold gurgles something that might have been a plea, and she rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to kill you, but you Foundation types need to lay off my case!” 

The driver’s eyes widen as they realize that Juno is who they’ve been waiting for, and as the passenger’s struggles slow and stop as he falls unconscious, she drags him out of the van fully and onto the ground, keeping the gun on the driver the whole time. There’s a half awake grumble from the back of the van, and Juno silently curses. The drivers gaze darts to the back, and they both realize this is going to be a very interesting next few moments.

A head with an off-kilter helmet pokes up into the cab, and disappears with a muffled curse. There’s what sounds like panicked thumping in the back as several likely angry Foundation Operators are woken up. Juno’s gaze switches to the back of the van for a split second, and the driver makes his move, reaching for a handgun tucked into the door. 18 Kelvins coughs twice, a bullet in each shoulder. The driver screams.

In the same instant, three more Operators burst out of the back of the van, and Juno ducks around the front of the Van, crouching down and wincing at the loss of her one advantage. Three bullets skip off the hood of the van, and she ducks down further. Even low velocity rounds could kill her without armor, but the armor weave of the clothing might take a round or two. Their weapons were silenced, too. 

Footsteps to her right force her into action as one or more flank around to her side. She leaps out of cover, strafing to her left as she sends three more rounds down range, two connecting with the sole remaining Operator on the left side of the van. He goes down with what she hopes are non-lethal wounds. 

She twirls around as the low thump of gas propelled munitions echoes through the parking lot, and cries out as two spikes punch through the thin material on her right arm, lodging themselves in her flesh. She  _ screams _ when the electrical current of a high-voltage taser courses into her. What a time to not be a Stormcaller. She drops to one knee even as she grabs the spikes and yanks them out, gritting her teeth as the electrical current disappears and blood runs down her arm. It would heal.

She manages to get half-way onto her feet before another set of spikes thump into her torso, just below her collarbone. First off, ow! Second off, this was bad. For all that she had repeatedly lectured her Fireteam about underestimating enemies, she’d fallen into the exact same habit! The electrical surge reflexively curved her spine as she screamed again. Arc deaths were the worst, and while this wasn’t quite as bad, it was a near sight without the insulation of her armor.

18 Kelvins dropped from her hand, disappearing in a sparkle of transmat, and she vaguely heard the crunching of boots on gravel as a fourth Operator, who’d likely been hanging back from the fight, rushed up behind her. She faintly felt the air change half a second before a rifle-stock slammed into the back of her head, and she knew no more, collapsing to the ground in a heap.

**A/N:** Sorry for the cliffhanger, but this chapter was looking to get rather long, so I decided to split it in two. I’m excited to keep this story going, and to expand on the SCP Mythos and Destiny in a unique way. Thanks for the visit, and Juno and Surf will return soon!

**Credits to OmegaEntertainment, Perseus, and Paradox Prime for editing and spot checking!**


	5. Log 7777-05

**A/N: To the Guest Reviewer on the last chapter, that is a concern I’ve had too. However, I’ve been consistently and constantly reminded that Juno is unlike anything the Foundation has dealt with before and that they haven’t sent in any specialists who might actually be suited to combat her specifically, Nu-7 being just the general ‘Point and Shoot’ style MTF for the Foundation. To the reviewer Raven, it’s a curious aspect, but not one I could find any solid information on. Regardless, if she’s got her shield all the time, there’s no challenge to this, even if it might be a bit outside the norm.**

**Log 7777-05.**

Juno woke up when her head slammed into a steel plate, her arms bound behind her, slumped over in the back of what was probably the same van she’d been fighting around earlier. She winced slightly as her head rattled for a moment, regulating her breathing to hopefully give the appearance she was still unconscious. Cracking one eye open slightly, she could just see several pairs of combat boots on the floor beside her, and she could plainly hear the Foundation Operators speaking to each other. They didn’t sound particularly happy with her.

Now, these Foundation types weren’t the first time she’d fought other Humans, or even Guardians, for that matter. As a Praxic, she’d fought Raiders, Slavers, and even a few Dredgens. Typically though, they went straight for the kill, and this experience of being taken prisoner was quite novel. Juno was fairly confident that she could break out most any time she wanted, with a quick application of a scaled-down Vortex Grenade or Fusion Grenade, but she was in part curious to see where they’d take her and what would happen when she got there.

A quick mental prod reassured her that Surf was still present, and hidden. Despite her situation, she couldn’t help but let a feeling of slight satisfaction roll over her. While things weren’t admittedly going to plan, she could at least learn more about her world, and maybe turn this situation in her favour. Besides, they’d obviously never dealt with anything like her before, or they’d be using some kind of Light neutralizing cuffs or tech, of which she couldn’t detect any present.

She still felt achy, though that was more phantom sensations than anything else, as her Light had healed her muscles and wounds caused by the tasers. Speaking of, that was actually quite clever on their part, though it wouldn’t have worked had she been wearing her armour. She wondered if they had actually realized that, or if they had just been running on a hope and a prayer. Regardless, there was nothing to do about it for now, and nothing for her to do except rest unless she probably wanted to get tazed or butt-striked again.

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia.**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker.**

The Nu-7 trooper was roused from his slumber by a rough hand shaking him, and as he flailed for a moment and gathered his bearings, he glared up at Zull as the man stepped back and crossed his arms. “Hammer 2 is back, they’ve brought in someone who they think is the traveller. Doctor Martin wants you there for the interrogation. You’ve got five minutes, Boss.”

Five minutes, eh? More than enough time to get up and ready. He rolled out of bed and set to making himself presentable, feeling refreshed and awake. Four and a half minutes later, he found himself outside the same interrogation/interview room he’d been in only the night before, this time with two armed and armoured Nu-7 Troopers standing guard outside, and Doctor Martin instead standing behind a one-way mirror looking into the room.

Nodding in greeting to the Doctor, Shane turns his attention to the room where, wearing slightly bloodied civvie clothes, a tanned woman with black hair and white facial tattoos stares directly at the mirror, an easy grin on her face. He turns back to Doctor Martin and asks, “Are we sure this is them? How’d Hammer 2 nab them?”

The Doctor sighs and shrugs, “I’m honestly not sure it’s them, though Hammer 2 reported the same glowing effect that the traveller showed when using their so-called ‘transmat’ abilities. They stole a car from the neighbourhood where they first appeared, and we tracked it to an abandoned lot outside Roanoke, and Hammer 2 staked it out. This woman approached under the guise of a civilian and assaulted the team, Lieutenant Davis and Corporal Cook were both shot twice, non-lethally. According to Sergeant Veri, she’s strong enough that he couldn’t escape a strangle-hold she locked him in.”

The Lieutenant raises an eyebrow and casts another look towards the woman. “How’d they take her down, then? Did we get the weapon she used?”   
  


Martin once more shakes his head, “No, the weapon disappeared when she dropped it, and she took two high-charge tazers before she went down. Note that any wounds she sustained in combat have already healed.”

Now that the Doctor mentioned it, her clothes, while bloody and a bit torn, revealed no wounds or even bruises beneath. “Doctor, why did you want me here?”

Shane already knew the answer, before the other man even spoke, and he withered a little inside. “I want you to be the one to speak to her. If it is her, you’re the only one she’s spoken to outside of the initial contact.” 

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia.**

**Warlock Juno.**

When the door finally opened, after nearly half an hour of sitting in silence, her grin only widened. Oh, perhaps the Foundation  _ did _ have a sense of humour! “Lieutenant Walker, how nice to see you again! Conscious and coherent this time, too!”

He groaned, and she suppressed a chuckle at his reaction, leaning back in her seat. “I assume you’re here to ‘interrogate’ me? They sent you because you’re literally the only person I’ve talked to, right?”

Sitting down across from her, he spreads a surprisingly thick folder out on the table, sorting through several papers. He sounds nothing except exhausted when he finally responds, “Yes...thank you for saving me after you shot me, I suppose. I’m here to ask you a series of questions, and I would kindly ask you to answer them truthfully and to the best of your capabilities, understood?”

Oh, this  _ would _ be fun. She waves airily and deliberately answers casually, “Sure, sure, fire away!”

He nods and takes a breath, “Let’s start off simple. What is your name?”

“Juno.” was her quick and concise reply.

He raises an eyebrow even as he writes down on a notepad in front of him, “Just Juno, no family or clan name?”

She shrugs, “If I had one, I don’t remember it anymore.”

“Noted, where are you from, Juno?”

She grins, “No clue. Don’t remember that either.”

Again, she earns a surprised look from him. He wasn’t trained, or he wasn’t a very good interrogator. “You...don’t remember?”

“Nope! I  _ think _ it was somewhere in Eastern Europe?”

“What makes you think that, Juno?” He asked, deviating from the scripted questions, but deeming the comment worth pursuing.

“That’s where I was brought back. The EDZ was  _ not _ a fun place to be resurrected.”

“...Resurrected? Are you saying you were brought back from the dead? What is the EDZ?” His words were carefully paced now as if to suppress his own disbelief.

“Yeah, I’m a Guardian, Risen, Wielder of Light, yadda yadda, whatever you want to call it. The EDZ is the European Dead Zone, Quarantined after the Collapse.”

“Right...you have established that you are not from this time. When  _ are _ you from?”

Juno pauses for a moment to think on this, comparing the Post Collapse Calendar to the current one, “Probably… the early 2730s? Post Collapse time-keeping isn’t what it used to be.”

“You’ve mentioned ‘the Collapse’ several times now, what is it?” The Lieutenant asks this slowly, cautiously, as if he almost doesn’t want to know.

Juno sighs, leaning forward. “Before I can tell you about the Collapse, first, you must know what came before.” She pauses for a moment, sorting what to say, “I think it was the early 2100s when the Traveler came. At first, it was thought to be a malfunctioning sensor array on Mars, but when we set people to fix it, we found an entity unlike anything we’d ever imagined, and it was  _ terraforming _ Mars.”

“Humanity made contact with this mysterious object, called it The Traveler, and it bestowed upon us gifts unlike any other. A Golden Age began and lasted for nearly three hundred years. Then...the Darkness came, and our Golden Age ended. The Eliksni were the first to arrive, scavengers of a Fallen Empire, chasing after the Traveler to reclaim their own Golden Age. After them came the Hive, evil incarnate, creatures so dark that they pull their power from the abyss itself. The Vex, creatures of metal and time, were always there, inhabiting their ruins and vaults on Venus and Mars, changing the worlds around them and growing ever stronger. Finally were the Cabal, soldiers of a mighty Empire that spans a significant portion of the Galaxy. Humanity was crushed under the weight of their anger, their rage and desperation.”

“The Traveler, though, was done running. It sacrificed itself, banishing the Darkness from Sol, and giving Humanity a second chance. It created the Ghosts to seek out and resurrect the greatest warriors and soldiers of ages past, to bestow upon them great powers and responsibilities, so that we may never suffer a second Collapse.” She reaches out with one hand, palm up, and with a shimmer of light energy, Surf appears, shell twirling as he chirps and looks at the amazed Lieutenant. His dark blue shell, a compass engraved around his one eye, is eye-catching. He disappears after a moment, retreating to safety.

Shane leans onto the table, a hand dragging down his face. It would likely take him a few moments to process the information she’d dumped on him, and that was perfectly fine with her. She once more leans back, crosses her arms, and waits.

After about two minutes by Juno’s count, the Lieutenant was either called out or signalled for a recess somehow, and she was once more left alone in the room. Surf appeared in a shower of sparks around her head, and gave her a squinty look, if compressing the front sections of a shell could be considered a squint. “Are you sure it was the best idea to dump information on these people like that?”

She sighs in turn, shaking her head. “No, it’s not. They won’t stop coming after us if they don’t know what we’re trying to prevent, though. I’ll bet you twenty Glimmer they still try to keep us here.”

The Ghost rolls over, spinning. “That’s a fools bet, no deal. Regardless, I suppose I see your point. I don’t like it though, I especially don’t like them knowing about me.”

“Some concessions are necessary, buddy. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten about Cayde and Sundance, I never will, but I won’t let the same happen to you.” Juno chides, well aware they were likely being recorded, not that it would make any sense to the Foundation without context.

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia.**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker.**

Doctor Martin gave him a dour look as soon as he stepped into the observation room. Shane rolls his eyes in turn, “Yes, I deviated from the script, but we got more information than we had ever expected, no?”

The Doctor sighs and nods, “I suppose we did. To think, she’s undead and has anomalous powers. It sounded like there were others like her, too! XK-Class Scenario, Undead Soldiers, extra-solar invasions. It’s like our worst nightmares all rolled into one!”

Shane nods sharply in agreement, only paying half attention to the Doctor, while trying to wrap his mind around this alternative future. “Don’t forget her armor is more powerful than we can gauge right now, Doc. My full team couldn’t punch through her shields, let alone the armor itself.”

His comment seems to draw the Doctor out of his thoughts, and the man jerks his view back to the Lieutenant. He snaps his fingers, “Lieutenant, you still need to complete the interview, we still have more questions before we transfer them to a cell.”

Shane takes the comment in stride for a moment, before his thoughts grind to a halt. “You want to try and  _ contain _ her here? Are you mad? We don’t have any idea what abilities she actually can use, and we  _ can’t  _ disarm her because she’ll just ‘transmat’ her weapons away!”

The Doctor’s eyes narrow, and he waves off the concerns. “There are ways around that, Lieutenant, though your concerns are noted. Get back in there now, we don’t have all day!”

Lieutenant Walker steps back into the room and draws his attention towards Juno. She sees him and sits up, purple...things...twirling between her fingers like marbles. They disappear with a little pop and handful of sparks as she dismisses whatever she was using or doing. “You’ve got more questions for me, I assume?”

He nods, sitting back down across from her. “Yes, we’re getting to the tail end of it now, and we’ve got just a few more questions for now.”

She smiles knowingly and claps her hands together, leaning forward. “Then you’ll tuck me away in a nice cell somewhere for the rest of my unending existence, yes?”

Suddenly, Shane felt like he rather needed something to drink, as his throat and lips were feeling rather dry. He swallows and keeps going, not letting her throw him off balance. “First up, we’d like to know what kind of powers you can use, and how?”

She sighs and leans back again, giving him an almost...humoring look. “That’d take forever to go through everything I can do. Do you want the fun stuff, or the boring stuff?”

There wasn’t even really a choice, “Let’s start with the boring stuff, hmm? The fun stuff can be discussed after, so neither of us get disappointed by the end of this.”

“Hmm, well, to start, you already know I can fly, or Glide, rather. That’s one of the most basic abilities my kind possess. I can enhance my mobility further with Blink, which allows me to teleport short distances. I can heal myself and others using a Rift or Well, and I can enhance weapons and armor the same way.”

_ What. _ She can teleport? That’s not fair! Outwardly, he raises an eyebrow and gives her a grave look. “And these are your  _ boring _ abilities? What are the ‘fun’ ones?”

“Well…” She smirks at him, “For one, I don’t stay dead. You  _ can _ kill me, sure, but I won’t stay that way, and I’ll just kill you back.”

Ah, that could be an issue.

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me thus far, and especially to all my friends who’ve helped me write this and keep it going. I typically don’t like ending chapters on cliff-hangers, but this one felt appropriate, and the chapter would’ve been a** **_lot_ ** **longer if I kept it going till where I had intended to finish it. See you in the skies, and Juno and Surf will return!**

**_Editing assistance, yet again, from OmegaEntertainment._ **


	6. Log 7777-06

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something I just noticed as I was uploading these was that the section separators I had been using through google docs didn't transfer over, once I have the time, I'm going to go back through and edit these chapters. Should help the flow a bit, so I apologize to anyone who slogs through it without them.

**A/N: To Drake G. Reaper: Stick around and find out ;)! To everyone else who reviewed or stopped by: Thanks, for just even considering my story, it really makes my day to see people here!**

**Log 7777-06.**

“Not only that, but there’s any number of ways I could atomize, vaporize, or bludgeon you to death with my hands and my powers. I could summon a sword of pure solar energy to incinerate you, or call upon the powers of the void itself to delete you from existence.” Juno says, counting off on her fingers, though it wasn’t strictly necessary. The Lieutenant looked suitably pale at these revelations and was probably having second thoughts about being in the same room as her.

“However! I don’t enjoy killing humans or even want to, as should be evident. How’s your friend from earlier, by the way? I was a bit rushed on my shot placement, I hope he’ll survive. I can heal him if you want.” Perhaps she was overplaying the spastic, mile a minute personality? Maybe, maybe not, but every advantage she could get when it came to their estimations and expectations of her was good, especially if she wanted to get out of here without any loss of life or severe damage.

Not wanting to let Walker get his momentum back, she leans forward and laces her hands together, resting her chin on them. “So, what reasons can you give me that I shouldn’t incapacitate you, vaporize that door, and leave so I can go back to trying to get home?”

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker**

Shane was at a loss for words. Not a common thing, mind you, but this was quite the set of extenuating circumstances. The woman in front of him had just threatened to ‘delete him from existence’, something which he was rather fond of, and thrown him for a loop. Reasons for her not to leave? He didn’t have any! She could go and steal another car and fuck off back to her own reality, for all he cared! Any reasons there  _ might _ be were probably classified FAR above his level.

Just as he opened his mouth to say just that, his radio crackled and Doctor Martin ordered him back out of the room. He quickly gathered his papers and practically sprinted for the door(though he would later insist he did no such thing). Behind him, the woman from the future chuckled and waved, “See you soon, Lieutenant!”

Stepping out the door and into the hall, he felt far tenser than he probably needed to be. That woman practically radiated danger, and even without her weapons and armour, he doubted he could beat her in a straight fight. Hell, he doubted his entire team could beat her in a fight! One of the guards outside the door nudged his shoulder, shaking him out of his thoughts. “You alright, Lieutenant?”

Shane scoffs at the question, shaking his head. “Not in the fucking slightest, Corporal. This is going to get interesting before the day is out.” He gathers himself and steps into the observation room, where the gaggle of researchers and scientists were talking loudly, arguing over what to do with her. Doctor Martin turned to the Lieutenant and asked, “What are your thoughts, Lieutenant? Best we can tell is that she’s said nothing but the truth so far.”

He grimaces, “She’s dangerous alright, that last few minutes it felt like I needed to fight or run as far as I could. I’ve never felt anything like that before.” Usually, he had a pretty good danger sense, when it came to these kinds of things, but his fight or flight reflex had been all over the board during that interview, though he hoped he kept it at least moderately well hidden.

“In any case, we’ve come to a decision…” Doctor Martin begins.

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Warlock Juno**

When Walker came back in, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, and holding a hefty looking pair of handcuffs, she knew that they’d made their decision. The Foundation would rather keep her buried away in some bunker underground rather than let her keep fighting the good fight. They probably wanted those crates of documents she stole, too…

She takes a deep breath and draws slightly on the power of Solar, and while she outwardly extends her hands for him to put on the cuffs, they wouldn’t stay on for long, but this was going to hurt, probably a lot. The cuffs click into place, and her Light recoils slightly from them. Interesting, they had suppressive properties, though nowhere near enough to actually contain her.

She lets herself be lead out into the hallway, well aware of the nervous tenseness between the guards and the Lieutenant. Solar Light begins to slowly heat the cuffs around her wrists, the change invisible to the plain eye. ‘Surf, be ready to give me something punchy and use a little glimmer to synthesize some non-lethal ammunition for it. We can make more glimmer, and I don’t want to rely on careful shot placement for this.’

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker**

Shane knew something was wrong when the hallway started to heat up, the origin seemingly directly in front of him. A hand dropped down to the holster on his hip, even as the otherworldly woman in front of him slowed her walking pace, her posture changing. He swallowed nervously. “Well gentlemen, thank you for the tour, but it’s past time I take my leave!”

He didn’t see exactly what happened, too busy palming for his radio and his gun, but he did see a molten mass of metal drop to the floor in front of Juno, even as she reached out to either side and grabbed the Nu-7 Troopers weapons by their barrels, a groan of superheated metal accompanying the action as she  _ melted _ the gun-barrels.

The Lieutenant had time to take a single step back before a heavy-looking green and gold shotgun dropped into the woman’s hands, her body twisting to face him almost faster than he could blink. ‘ _ Oh fuck.’ _ Was the only thought that went through his head as with a loud whump, a full scatter of buckshot slammed directly into his chest plate, knocking him onto his back with a wheeze. Surprisingly, he wasn’t dead, or at least he didn’t think he was dying.

Regardless, there wasn’t much more he could do than to lie there and wonder why he wasn’t dead, even if it did feel like his ribcage wanted to collapse in on itself…..

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Warlock Juno**

Juno stepped gently over the wheezing Lieutenant, the unconscious soldiers slumped on either side of the hall behind her. She expected the alarms to start ringing any moment now, so she needed to get moving. If memory served, there was only one entrance to the facility, and she needed to make it there before they could either lock it down or disable it. She pumped the shotgun in her hands, reassured by its balanced weight. Surf materialized a new shell in her hand, and she slipped it into the breach, glad that Surf could make rubber buckshot. 

She was also incredibly glad that it was powerful enough to put these guys on their asses without hurting them permanently. She set off at a slow jog, and about fifteen seconds after the first shot was fired, the alarms started blaring through the halls, the sound ringing in her ears. Ahead of her, two unarmed men in lab coats stumbled out of a room on the right, giving her a bewildered and panicked look. 

No weapons, no problem. She completely bypassed them, ignoring their shouts and twisting away from the braver of the two, who reached out to grab her hoodie. Slipping through a closing door, she continued on through the beige hallways, navigating purely on memory. Another researcher lunges out of a receded doorway at her, and for a brief moment manages to grapple with her.

Letting go of the shotgun in a shimmer of transmat, she meets the brave but clearly out of his depth researcher’s attack, twisting him around and down onto the floor. A keycard of some kind slips out of his jacket and onto the floor, and with a final blow to his head, she knocks him unconscious and grabs the keycard. She had no idea what it was used for, but it might come in handy.

The next major roadblock to present itself was a group of what appeared to be security forces, stacked behind barricades in front of what was her only probable exit out of the base. They didn’t seem very heavily armed and armoured, but she didn’t really have anything that could disable all of them without injuring them, and she couldn’t tank all that fire for more than a few seconds without her armour, maybe even with it.

Oh, what she would have given to use those Stun Grenades Titans were so fond of. Dawnblade and Nova Bomb weren’t exactly suited to non-lethal fighting, and she’d have to severely underpower her other abilities to prevent herself from vaporizing these poor sods. Unless…

“Surf, can you get into their network yet, or do I need to find you a terminal?” She asks, backing off of the entrance and jogging back down the hall the way she came, to where she’d been attacked by the last researcher. She pulls out the keycard she’d picked up, a bright yellow plastic thing, with a scanner stripe on one side. Last time she’d seen something like this was an old Tech Museum on the Old American East Coast when she’d been tracking down a Rogue Lightbearer.

As if to mock her, the first time she tried the card she got a bad read, swiping it through too fast. She made a face at the scanner, rather petty of her, admittedly, but swiped the card again and the door opened. She stepped into what for all intents and purposes appeared to be an office and looked around. She was alone, thankfully, and there were no cameras in here that she could see.

Her Ghost appeared above her head in a brief shower of light, single eye scanning around the room to locate the terminal built into the central desk in the room. She watches the manifestation of Light shoots a beam of data into the computer, interfacing with it in a way no computer of this time was designed to, yet making it work in ways even Juno barely understood. 

“I’m in!” Came the reply from her companion, and he flew back towards her and swirled around her. “I’ve got access to the cameras, doors, and a map of the facility layout.”

Juno smirked, “Good. Now, just how far underground are we, and are there any other exits?”

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Lieutenant Shane Walker**

Shane woke with a pounding headache and a very sore chest. Pushing himself up with a wince, he notes that the other Nu-7s(not members of his team, thankfully), are still unconscious, their melted guns fused onto the floor and rapidly cooling. Thankfully, his own sidearm was still intact, on the floor a few feet away, where he’d dropped it when he’d been shot in the chest.

Speaking of, the lack of any actual damage to his chest plate was rather surprising, especially considering the calibre of the shotgun she’d shot him with. Regardless, he was beyond happy that she’d decided to load non-lethal ammunition, though it still had hurt like hell. 

Pulling himself to his feet, he swipes up his gun, and steps off in the direction of the entrance, intending to find the damned woman and do something he’d probably regret. 

Ten minutes of walking and several unconscious researchers later, Shane was almost shot as soon as he rounded the final corner to the exit, saved only by the fact that the Facility Security in charge had better-held trigger fingers than some MTF Operators he’d known. After grabbing a spare rifle, and briefing them on what he knew, he set back out with the company of two Security personnel to search for Juno, while the rest kept the facility locked down. 

Nu-7 reinforcements were on the way, but apparently, someone had found their way into the security systems and was playing hell with the security doors and internal comms, making it hard to communicate internally or externally. He would bet that it was Juno and her ‘Ghost’, probably having found an unlocked computer somewhere.

Speaking of, he glared at the security door in front of him, blocking them off from actually passing back into the central area of the Site, as he swiped his keycard repeatedly, to no effect. Just as he’s about to go for yet another swipe with the card, the gate sounds its opening alarm and the door slides to the side. Shane’s vision is filled with white as a junior researcher is thrown bodily through the doorway and into him.

Wheezing for a moment, he shoves the groaning woman off of his chest and reaches for his gun again, then freezes. He’d found the Warlock alright, but she’d at some point put her armour back on, and he was suddenly much less confident. (Later, he’d look back on this and realize that she could’ve summoned her armour at any time).”Hello Lieutenant! We just keep running into each other, don’t we?”

**Site 47, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

**Warlock Juno**

Any other time, Juno would’ve made a joke about fates intertwined, but now really wasn’t the time to be lackadaisical. Shotgun held across her chest, she sighs as the two greys wearing security personnel start yelling for her to drop the gun. Pumping the action, she raises Felwinter’s Lie and puts a scattering of rubber buckshot into the closer of the two’s chest, and he goes down with a pained cry. 

Her shields flare as the remaining one opens fire with a submachine gun of a model she didn’t recognize, doing minimal damage to the protective energy layer. She ejects the spent shell casing and fires another, winging the poor man and sending him to the floor. She draws out two more shells and slides them into the gun, then secures it on her back. 

Juno reaches down and heaves the Lieutenant up, his armour and size irrelevant in the face of paracausal strength and endurance. If the fates wanted him to keep running into her so badly, she’d oblige them this once, and bring him along for the ride. The word kidnapping left a bad taste in her mouth, so she silently decided, much to Surf’s endless amusement, to refer to the action as ‘information gathering’.

He protested rather feebly(in her opinion), but given the beating he’d taken over the last hour, and the fact that he was a plain old standard human, there wasn’t much of a comparison to be made. She did, however, make sure to pluck his gun from its holster and have it transmatted into her inventory. It was probably incredibly weak compared to Light-Forged weapons, but it would be an interesting piece to analyze.

The man on her shoulder drives an elbow into her back, and she winces beneath her helmet, jabbing him in the side with her other hand. “Oi, knock that off.”

The grunt of “No!” sounded almost petulant, though she couldn’t really fault him for struggling. With the man on her shoulder trying to unbalance her, escape, or just generally be an annoyance, a steady walking pace was the best she could manage, and so walk she did, straight towards the entrance. 

It didn’t occur to Juno until she was near to the entrance that the Lieutenant was well within arms reach of her shotgun, and by that point, he’d noticed it too. She cursed and tried to drop the now armed soldier, but the sound of the slide pumping and the subsequent gunshot put that on the backburner. 

Felwinter’s Lie was an interesting weapon. Forged by the Iron Lords during the Dark Age, the shotgun was capable of killing far more powerful beings than Juno. Though loaded with rubber buckshot as it was, it still was a Light-Forged weapon, and when Shane fired it, it nearly dislocated his arm with the recoil, even as Juno’s shields shattered and she fell to one knee, her left leg numb and aching. 

“Bloody fool! That gun will shatter your bones if you’re not careful!” She shouts at him, instinctively casting a Healing Rift to counter any damage the shotgun may have caused beyond the superficial. The Nu-7 Operator grimaced from his own position, pushing himself onto his feet and grabbing the gun again before the Warlock could take it back. He rolls his shoulder and winces, that really  _ had _ hurt.

Internally, Juno is slightly concerned that her escape might end more abruptly than planned. Even loaded with non-lethal shells, Felwinter’s Lie could stop a rampaging Titan in their tracks, and it would probably be able to knock her onto her ass just as easily, if not knock her out. Luckily, there was a very easy solution. “Hey Surf, put Felwinter’s away, would you?”

The Lieutenant cried out in surprise when the gun in his hand disappeared in a shower of light as if it had never been there in the first place. At the moment that he was distracted, Juno was suddenly in front of him, moving faster than a standard human possibly could. A palm strike to a weak point in his armour drove the breath from his lungs and quite possibly broke a rib or two, too. 

“Sorry, but you’re too much trouble awake.” She mutters, throwing his injured and now very much incapacitated form over her shoulder again. She steps around a corner and immediately twists around, covering the Lieutenant as a fusillade of fire sweeps over her shields, the immediately hostile greeting not unexpected. “Surf, tap their comms, put me through.”

She can see several soldiers wince as two completely foreign communications systems momentarily clash before her signal goes through and Surf gives her the okay. “Unless you want your Lieutenant dead so bloody much, stop shooting at me!”

It took about thirty seconds, and Juno had grown concerned they might actually break through her shields, but they did stop shooting, and she let out a silent sigh of relief. Turning back to face them, Walker still on her shoulder, she glares at the security forces surrounding her in a half-circle. “Let me leave, and no further harm will come to you all. I have no quarrel with you, and I do not  _ want _ to fight you.”

One man steps forward from the line of barricades, a rifle held slack in his arms. “What do you want with the Lieutenant, then? You’re not leaving with him, not today.” 

Juno raises an eyebrow, this one was brave. Not terribly smart if he thought they could actually stop her, but brave. “Don’t worry, he’s simply….insurance. I’ll leave him outside, but the chances of you letting me past without a hostage or some other bargaining chip are….low.”

The still-unnamed Security Officer seems to concede that point readily enough. He sighs, “Sorry, but I cannot  _ let _ you pass without authorization from the Site Administrator, which I currently don’t have.”

The Warlock smiles under her helmet, getting his hint. There’s a faint flicker of purple over her armour as she flips the ‘switch’ in her mind from Solar to Void Light. She steps forward, slowly picking up the pace as she drew nearer. The man tenses, and someone, probably panicking, fires a single, hesitant shot. It goes nowhere near her as she jumps up, and Blinks the 10 meters through the line of barricades, appearing behind the Security Forces as shouts of alarm echo into the room.

Someone tries to take another shot at her, but the man from before shouts for them to hold their fire, not wanting to risk hitting the Lieutenant. She slips into the elevator with the still unconscious Trooper and mashes the up button, a well of relief rising up in her chest. She wasn’t out of this yet, but the biggest hurdle was over with.

The elevator dings and the doors open a moment later, letting her out into the mountain air once more. She slides the man off her shoulder and onto the ground, resting him against a wall. She pats him down for a moment, and draws out a small electronic device, a cellphone, she believed it was called. “Surf, can you interface with this?”

Her expression took on a mischievous tone, and as the Ghost appeared, she explained her plan. When Surf asked for her reasoning, her simple answer was, “There’s something special about this one. He’s interesting.”

**A/N:** And that’s a wrap! Bloody hell, this chapter was a rough write. I’m not entirely satisfied with it, but this is going to be the best I can do without pushing it back another couple days. Classes have been beating my ass recently, so I apologize for how late this is anyways. As always, reviews, comments, and criticisms are always welcome, and Juno and Surf (and Shane) will return!


End file.
